Editorial

As anticipated, there were some problems with the large number of
GIFs that I put into the last issue. Okay, I got carried away and
put in far too many big maps!!  The problem seems to be that the
pictures aren't cleared from memory after being displayed so
eventually the memory gets filled up.  Alex used someone else's
Delphi routine to add this facility and even the original
programmer doesn't have any suggestions to solve it!  Alex tried
an alternative way of displaying them but we've decided, for the
moment at least, to stick with the original method. If you hear
your hard disk starting to clunk, this is the warning to quit
SynWin. This clears the memory so you can then run it again and
continue where you left off if you want. But to be sensible, I
will restrict myself to fewer, smaller pix each issue. Let me just
say that this memory problem doesn't harm your machine in any way,
in case you were concerned; it's just an inconvenience.

Thanks to those readers who sent in reviews after my mention last
issue about shortages of contributors and, especially reviews. Any
more for NEXT issue will be gratefully accepted! Things got very
hectic here over Christmas (glad to say that after 18 months my
DTP business is finally getting going properly) so having a good
selection of contributions here to choose from was a big help.  I
would far rather put together the magazine from your contributions
than use files from the Internet or public domain. Alan's annual
review is in this issue - thanks to all his fans who asked me to
remind him that it was 'that time of year again'.

I'm having great fun on the Internet. There's just so much to see
on there ... I tell Alan I'll be back in 15 minutes and vanish for
an hour! The Grue suggested that we set up a regular SynTax
chatroom. How many of you would be interested in meeting up on
there, say, once a month?  Funnily enough I had just written this
Editorial and happened to be chatting to Alex when he mentioned
that he'd set up a chatroom on his webpage! I told him of Grue's
idea and he said 'You can use mine!' so I went on and tested it
out with him. It's the first time I've tried chatting on line and
I really enjoyed it. To use Alex's room, you need to be running
Internet Explorer or have mIRC installed. I use IE so didn't have
any problems, and I've added two versions of mIRC 4.7 to the
library.  We could arrange to meet on, say, the first Saturday in
each month at 8pm ... if interested email me on sue_medley@msn.com
and tell me if any day/time are especially good or bad for you.
We can arrange something by Issue 47 if not before. Also on a
related topic, Neil Shipman suggested we start a list of readers'
email addresses. If you want to be added to the list, please let
me know and I'll start it next issue.

Oh, the SynTax homepage has moved too, as Alex has changed
providers. It's now at -
http://www.euronet.nl/users/darkside/syntax/
Have a look!

Bill Hoggett has sent a lot of additions to the library over all
formats.  There is some duplication with disks already in the
library as many are compilations arranged by type (eg TADS games,
Inform games, Gecko Adventures) and I've added the disks as they
came to me. As you know, I don't have an Amiga and Richard kindly
copies the Amiga SynTax and library disks for me. I've previously 
got a couple of copies of all new Amiga library additions as 
they've come in; I haven't got the storage space to do this any 
more with almost 1100 disks in the library so I'll get Amiga 
disks copied as they are needed. This means there will be about 
a week's turn-around time for Amiga disks while they go from me 
to Richard, back to me and then to you!

I haven't been back to Daggerfall but I agree with Brian's
comments as far as I've seen ... a most impressive game and it
sounds as though it could keep us busy for a life time. I've gone
back to Shannara, having finally got it running on my machine by
going into DOS using option 8 on boot up. I have fond memories of
the original books and am enjoying the game which, though not
especially hard, is quite long and moderately convoluted. I'll get
a review done for next issue.

Well, I hope that 1997 will be a healthy, happy and successful
year for all of you.
                                        With my best wishes
                              - o -               Sue